One trait Ndigbo have thrown overboard since Biafra, is keeping distance from one another in our craving for lone-stardom. No group can sustain relevance that way.
Ndigbo, since the war, have kept up with migration to distant investment destinations for fear of envy from home. They fulfil status demands by building huge mansions back home and leave such for near permanent hibernation in neighbouring and foreign lands. They originally had the Jewish trait of patronising their own until the war when the dog-eat-dog syndrome germinated and took root. A baseless competition arrests the minds of the affluent and compels them to avoid home. They dread closeness of relations and prefer neighbours who revere and praise their success to becoming relevant among people for whom they incarnated and must uplift.
TheNiche, a Sunday newspaper, hit the newsstands April this year to a tumultuous applause of the high and mighty. Yet not one page of advertisement can be seen from Ndigbo who are reputed to command a good proportion of landed assets, which is the most potent hedge against inflation known to urban Nigeria. They have shown defiance to indigenes everywhere in owning and developing landed property. They pine away when envy and unrest set it. They flee leaving huge capital that could have triggered their people into higher levels of productivity and cognate employment collateral benefit, were such to be invested in productive industrial ventures.
The backward integration components of such would have been enormous. They hang atomised in huge cities reveling their conquest and occasionally returning for some high society event to assert to their people that they are there. Little do they think that they incarnated among their people for a reason.
The reason common to all human beings is that they have social responsibility for the people among whom nature has planted them. Ndigbo as a nation is in deep suffering on account of lack of love and social responsibility for one another.
TheNiche has been born to provide Ndigbo a voice. It must become that voice until another comes on stream. It must be patronised to stay alive. Its pages are full of stuff, professionally presented. Journalism in the weekly may not be perfect, but matches other top national newspapers blow for blow. Yet, it has not excited the minds of Ndigbo to rise to its support in all theatres of its evident needs.
What a news medium needs is patronage of its endless advertisement space. I mean advert space is elastic to needs of patrons. The medium cannot have enough. Quite a number of banks and insurance houses have Igbo top management. A number of federal government organs have Igbo top brass that can shore up TheNiche to recreate Nigeria from an Igbo window.
Ndigbo are potent partners in Project Nigeria and must hold well before nourishing the project. The impending implementation of national conference agreements and resolutions is pertinent for All-Nigeria-Resurgence. Why should we fight shy of our own? It is correct for all ethnic groups in the country to come to the Nigerian project as healthy parts of a healthy whole. Any sick part is bound to afflict the whole.
Perhaps Nigeria should learn anew from Awolowo’s philosophy of addressing own communal needs before national needs. He set up structures that led his people to national top stage. His only problem is that he schemed Ndigbo to relegation after they had selflessly built Project Nigeria to significant levels of comfort for the majority. No one who makes progress by preying on others will avoid suffering for injustice and impropriety. No one should suffer that others may be happy. Happiness for all is a goal worth fighting for. But each group must put its cards on the table face up and stimulate healthy competition based on what is powered by love and social responsibility for the majority.
TheNiche must be fully supported by Ndigbo that we may know more love and enjoy respect in Project Nigeria for the benefit of all Nigerians. It is culturally appropriate to sell Nigeria from all the parts with equal zest and commitment from all parts. The ‘monkey dey work, baboon dey chop’ principle must be killed and buried for good.
It is not late to begin to engender love for our own by patronising TheNiche in the whole of Igboland. Let our national unity start afresh with this. Nothing should make us fight shy of our own voice and the need to make it sonorous, compelling and factual for total health of Project Nigeria.
